Featured Post

Operation: All Clear - The Oklahoma City Bombing

Oklahoma City Bombing The Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995 was alleged to have been carried-out by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (alone...

Friday, May 23, 2008

A Little Wistful Rambling

This is going to be a bit... something - I don't know what until it's done, but I know it's kind of silly. I just wanted to put this down because it has been on my mind a lot lately.

I am watching Back to the Future (great flick) and recently saw a documentary featuring the Bad Brains, and both have positive messages which have to do with one's mindset or outlook. In the movie, the message is "you can do anything if you put your mind to it." The Bad Brains generally espouse the philosophy that if one keeps a positive outlook, positive things will happen.

Now I applaud the efforts of both and want to believe in this philosophy, but is there really any merit to it at all?

I have often tried to have a positive outlook, but the truth is that I am a pretty cynical young man. Cynicism aside, I like to think of myself as more pragmatic. Maybe bitterly pragmatic is a better way to put it, but it's a pragmatic outlook moreso than "negative." But my outlook has never really helped me, so I would love to change it.

However, my outlook has often prepared me for disappointment. Not to say these things were inevitable or anything like that, just that, had I maintained a positive outlook, I believe several things in my life would have come as greater, more crushing, blows than they did because they would have been largely unexpected.

Like I said, there's nothing new to any of this and it isn't some personal revelation - just something on which I've been musing a lot lately and wanted to open up for discussion. It doesn't just affect me; the current state of the world is pretty bleak, so I'm wondering if an overall change in outlook would do all of us any good. Obviously, I am not going to chuck it all and become some sort of "Have a Nice Day" guru or start preaching the values of a happy mentality to the world at-large, but I am interested in hearing what others think.

© C Harris Lynn, 2008

1 comment:

  1. Tom Savini is the SFX genius behind some of the goriest horror flicks of all time, including Friday the 13th, many of the Living Dead movies, and tons more.

    He kept a journal of his time on-set during the filming of the new Lost Boys II (he is an actor in this one), and he mentions this positive philosophy in relation to being robbed.

    It's around the third paragraph, but the whole thing is interesting.

    ReplyDelete